Whether we call them the “Net Generation,” “Millennials,” or simply “our students,” today’s 18- to 22-year-olds have one thing in common: they all grew up with and became users of advanced technologies at a much earlier age than did most higher education faculty members and administrators. Their use of technology is a defining part of their academic and social lives, and they bring with them a new set of beliefs, expectations,and abilities that are both exciting and challenging. Learn more about these new students.

A Gap is Developing… Between the tools and resources we are deploying and those selected and used by Net Gen students. Between us and them regarding how these tools and resources are being used.

What Can we Do… talk with and observe our students, we need to illuminate these points, read about “generations effect”, develop contexts for Net Gen students to integrate their tools of choice into our education, research, and service environments. Get to know the students, infiltrate and co-opt with them.

VIDEO by a psychology instructor on meeting students half way… understand them, and then infiltrate and co-opt with them.

“Can we develop online services that compare favorably to those they use?”

How can we address the Net Gen’s naive views on intellectual property?

What is the connection with social networking.

How much do we KNOW our students.

Do our plans speak of them in the third person.

What do we know about their personal technologies and how they use them.

VIDEO UCF video on technology and student interviews.

Information Fluency is a project at UCF that provides a conjunction of technology, critical thinking, and communication.

CCSSE: Five Years, Five Key Lessons, Five Strategies

Room 17A, Level 4

11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m.

What’s all the “buzz” about student engagement? What have we learned in the past five years about engaging students? What key lessons have we learned about the need to engage students and how to improve that engagement? What strategies are most effective? The Community College Survey of Student Engagement
(CCSSE) has elicited valuable information about student engagement from approximately 700,000 students in 548 colleges across 48 states, and British Columbia and the Marshall Islands. In this dynamic and interactive session, community college leaders will discuss what CCSSE results have revealed about their students, key lessons about using data to inform decisions, and descriptions of intentional strategies, programs, and relationships that contribute to promising student outcomes.

Kay McClenney, Director, SENSE and CCSSE, The University of Texas at Austin

Notes:

Introductions

Group Interaction – Going through the survey items as tables.

2008, approximately 700,000 students have responded to surveys.

In 2007, 573,030 students from 279 colleges across 48 states have been involved in CCSSE initiatives.

Five Lessons Learned:

Be Intentional

Engagement matters for all students, but it matters more for some than for others.

Part time students and faculty are the reality of community colleges – and typically are not addressed in improvement efforts.

Data are our friends.

Look behind the numbers.

Five Strategies the Work:

Set high expectations and clear goals.

Focus on the front door.

Elevate developmental education.

Use engaging instructional approaches.

Make engagement inescapable.

El Paso Community College

During the past several years, what initiatives, programs, practices have your college implemented to promote student engagement on your campus?

El Paso is an Acheiving the Dream college.

Help get students out of development ed faster. Working with K-12 partners in El Paso in the high schools giving the accuplacer test to seniors and juniors with the intent of getting the number of students ready for college.

Working on initiatives for those students who have been away from college for some time. A prep program, allows them to take accuplacer, then spend 6 hours to improve their score on the accuplacer will prevent the need for some students of even being entered into developmental ed.

Active and Collaborative Learning: Group/Cohort, Service Learning, Student Organizations, Center for Learning Excellence, First Year experience, Family Orientation, Practicum/Internship programs.

Challenges and Commitment: Committed to student success, student engagement connect to student to college and faculty is the most powerful, implement a variety of services for solutions that students need. There isn’t one solution sometimes. Being a commuter campus, be aware of parking/class/parking and focus on the in between times.

Data shows that that 21% of students work with other students outside of class and only 15% discussed ideas outside of the class with their instructors.

NISOD’s Learning Scenarios: Online Solutions for Staff and Faculty Development

Room 19A, Level 4
Learn how to engage your faculty and staff in an adult-learning framework that is respectful and challenging. We will demonstrate how NISOD’s Learning Scenarios bring faculty and staff into deep
discussions around the core mission of the community college while leading them to expert resources about how to improve their results in the classroom and the workplace.

Instructor-led and based on real-life situations that faculty and staff may encounter.

Format includes an orientation, story at-a-glance, character profiles, learning objectives, storyline broken down into episodes and scenes.

Resources, activities, discussion, surveys, projects, quizzes, assignments, course feedback are all part of a Learning Scenario.

The duration of these can run from 2 to 6 weeks.

The course is delivered through Blackboard.

Asynchronous, instructor-led, student cohort, reflective, asks for a committment to change: “What will you do differently next semester?”

Originally created for adjunct professors because it’s difficult to get training to them.

Process of Creating a Scenario:

Identify a need.

Creating learning outcomes.

Work with SMEs to storyboard the scenario that will connect with target audience.

Select resources and create activities that support the learning outcomes.

Add visuals and audio.

Build-in an assessment tool.

Is professional development required for staff and faculty at your organization?

Does you college offer an incentive for professoional development to staff and faculty?

2 hour block on Tuesday and Thursdays. These are when nothing is scheduled so training can occur.

The NISOD booth in the Exhbit Hall has examples of additional resources available regarding subscriptions to the media.

4:00-5:00 p.m.

M-learning: Breaking the Barriers through Interactivity for the Net Generation

Room 11B, Level 4

New levels of mobile and classroom interaction are attained by three powerful devices. The PDA (Palm, Pocket PC) combines extraordinary mobility for practice and assessment in such areas as Compass Math test, dental hygiene, and oral pathology. Tablet PCs capture the live component of biology lessons for online and podcast learning. Clickers enhance productivity in administering tests, performing assessments, or conducting an interactive review. Experience the power these devices bring to classroom and mobile learning.

Ongoing Projects – Clickers in the classroom, PDAs in Dental Hygiene, PDAs in Nursing, Pocket PCs in Math, and Tablet PCs to iPods.

Personal Response System: Clickers – Small devices used by students to submit their answers to a multiple choice quiz with the mobile device and then the instructor can determine which student picked which answer.

Clickers and Nursing Students – Students take quizzes.

Clickers can be used for small group discussion, attendance, warm up discussion/questions, contingent teaching and clear up the muddiest points.

Dental uses for PDAs have been for quizzing (Quizzler). PDAs are “signed out” by students and they are responsible for replacement. Davis Drug Guide for Nurses and NCLEX-RN Review software.

Math quizzes on PDAs provided student with practice and the pass rate measured by the college showed an increase in the success rate of students. The purpose is “quizzes on the go”. The college developed the application in Flash.

The college is also using Camtasia for the development of video files for their iTunes U site.

Multimedia tools such as audio clips and discussions provide instructors with unique opportunities for presenting course material to generate interest and create active online engagement for students in online, hybrid, and traditional course environments. Virtual worlds and social networks engage the students in an alternative learning format. Please join us for an exciting session discussing research, practical experiences, pros and cons, learning style applications, and solutions for using easy and straight-forward E-tools in your courses.

Neither technology nor teaching and learning tools alone will solve the issues facing community colleges. With remediation, retention, and “turn at the door” rates top-of-mind, it is important to know that Blackboard is far more than just a course management system. This session will provide an in-depth look at what community colleges are (and could be) doing to enable mentoring/community connections, safe content sharing, and collaboration and academic improvement at a class, program, and institution level. Participants will leave empowered to meet with institutional staff to understand how they intend to use Blackboard as a platform helping to meet strategic goals, instead of a place to post a course syllabus.